Estimating good discrete partitions from observed data: Symbolic false nearest neighbors

A symbolic analysis of observed time series requires a discrete partition of a continuous state space containing the dynamics. A particular kind of partition, called generating, preserves all deterministic dynamical information in the symbolic representation, but such partitions are not obvious beyond one dimension. Existing methods to find them require significant knowledge of the dynamical evolution operator. We introduce a statistic and algorithm to refine empirical partitions for symbolic state reconstruction. This method optimizes an essential property of a generating partition, avoiding topological degeneracies, by minimizing the number of symbolic false nearest neighbors. It requires only the observed time series and is sensible even in the presence of noise when no truly generating partition is possible.